Forbidden Boss (Ebook Version)

NIKKI

On the seventh day of my employment at the Blakely Advertising Agency, I found myself locked in a room with a giant dildo. That was unfair; it wasn’t really a dildo—at least, not in the sense that I was familiar with them—but it was distinctly phallic. And huge.

As the minutes bled into one hour, and then two, I stared at the giant bottle of perfume that was to be the star of an advertising campaign for an emerging luxury fashion house, and I saw dick.

“I think it’s the slight curvature,” I told my friend Penny, who was busy wrangling her toddler. “And there’s a texture to the bottle that if you squint, looks almost…vascular. And the shape of the bottle itself doesn’t help. Like an elongated bullet with a bit of a flared tip to accommodate the spray nozzle. They’ve put it on a little trolley with some fake clouds clumped around the base that are very testicular.”

The phone ruffled and a child squealed in the background. Penny huffed into the microphone and said, “Why the clouds?”

“The theme of the shoot is celestial sensuality. Models wearing gauzy dresses and shimmer all over their bodies reclining in the clouds while they hug this thing.”

“So it’s intentional.”

“You’d think so, but no one has mentioned it.”

That seemed to get Penny’s attention. “You mean you’ve been working on this shoot for a couple of days, and no one has mentioned that the bottle is a giant cock?”

“They keep talking about the freshness of the scent and the aspirational nature of the campaign. Taking people to heaven.”

“Let me guess. A man came up with this concept?”

I barked out a laugh, leaning against one of the wire shelves behind me. “Yep. They say Mr. Blakely himself was the brain behind this one.”

“The guy who owns the company?”

“Yeah. Apparently the client loved the idea, and they’ve run with it ever since. Yesterday they shot with smoke and glitter, hence me having to wash and polish this thing.”

Penny giggled. “So you’ve been stuck in a room for two hours rubbing down a giant—”

“Yep.”

“And no one’s mentioned it.”

“Nope.”

“How long did it take for you to figure out you were locked in?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“What’s taking so long? Why aren’t they getting you out of there?”

“Took forever to find the keys, then they figured out the lock was broken, then their usual locksmith was on vacation, so they had to call around to get someone over here quickly. Now the longer I look at this thing, the more it looks like a huge dildo.”

“Maybe it’s all in your head. Maybe you need to get laid,” she suggested.

I considered Penny’s words. After all, it had been a while since I’d been with a man. I let my gaze trace the six-foot perfume bottle and said, “No. It’s definitely a huge cock.”

Penny giggled, then gasped and told me, “Nikki, I need to go. Timmy just spilled juice all over our kitchen floor.” Her four-year-old was cute as a button and also happened to be an absolute terror with more energy in his little toe than I had in my entire body. That she’d been able to chat as long as she had was a surprise.

“All right. Thanks for entertaining me for a while.”

“I wish I could talk longer. Any word on when you’re getting out of there?”

“The locksmith should be here any minute.”

“Text me when you’re out.”

“Will do,” I replied, staring at the giant penis. It had to be intentional. There was just no way dozens of people could design and approve this bottle without knowing they were mass-producing perfume-filled phalluses. Just no way.

“Nikki?” a voice called out through the metal door. “How are you doing?”

It was Eleanor, the prop stylist for the shoot. She was a few years younger than me, in her mid-twenties, and she’d been the only person to befriend me on set so far. Over the whole of the studio was a thick sense of urgency, a palpable fear of messing up. Thankfully for them, I was here to take the fall for everyone as the daily screwup.

“I’m okay,” I answered.

My prison wasn’t the worst place to be. The storage room had light and air, and I’d been able to sit on one of the tables on the back wall. One side of the room was covered in shelving that held various props and cleaning supplies. I’d been tasked with polishing the penis before its big moment on stage. It wasn’t until I was done rubbing it down with a microfiber cloth that I realized the door behind me wouldn’t open. I had to call Eleanor before anyone even noticed something was wrong. That had been nearly two hours ago.

“The locksmith was stuck in traffic but he’s down with security as we speak, so it won’t be long.”

“Thank you. Is everyone freaking out about the shoot being delayed?”

There was a pause. “It’s not too bad.”

I snorted. “Be honest.”

Through the door, I heard Eleanor’s soft huff. “Ophelia’s losing her mind. She’s rushing around trying to get everyone to get back to work, but there’s nothing to do until we can get the perfume bottle out. The last shot we need is with the big one.”

I eyed the proverbial big one through slanted eyes. “Right. Why is she so worried all of a sudden?” And where was this urgency two hours ago, when the lock on that stupid door first jammed? It took them nearly forty minutes of messing around with keys before they even contacted a locksmith.

“Well…” Eleanor dropped her voice so I had to press my ear to the door. “I heard someone say Rome Blakely is on the way down.”

“Ah,” I answered. “That explains it.”

“Ophelia’s worried he’ll fire her on the spot. It’s costing them a hundred thousand dollars an hour to hold the talent here for this project.” They’d hired famous models for the shoot, but the number still staggered me.

“That’s a lot more than I get paid in a year,” I noted.

“You and me both, girl.”

Cringing, I tried the door handle again, just in case. It rotated into nothing, not engaging the latch to open the door.

“Would he really fire her for something that isn’t her fault?”

“Well…he’s been known to fire people for less.”

I heard the subtext of her words and swallowed thickly. “So my new job might be over a lot faster than I expected, is what you’re saying.”

“This wasn’t your fault,” she protested, but her voice lacked conviction.

“Right.”

“Ophelia’s calling me. The locksmith will be here soon.”

I grunted halfheartedly. The minute that door opened, my employment at this advertising agency would be over.

New York is an at-will employment state, so if Mr. Blakely did see fit to pin this disaster on me, it wouldn’t be the first time I was let go for less-than-scrupulous reasons. The whole reason I was working this crappy job in the first place was because my previous boss decided he didn’t want to follow through on his promises to promote me. When I finally worked up the nerve to ask him about it, he fired me instead. That was after I’d paid for a business management certificate out of pocket after he’d told me he’d reimburse me once I got promoted.

Like an idiot, I’d bought his bullshit. Had the debt to prove it.

A consultant had informed my former boss it’d be cheaper to replace me than to pay me what I was worth, and that was the end of that.

Life hadn’t exactly been going according to plan lately. The loss of my job seemed to be the first domino in a long line of increasingly alarming events. First, the promotion turned into a firing, leaving me high and dry with a useless certificate and a lot of debt. Then the landlord for the rent-controlled apartment I’d been living in for years told me he wouldn’t be renewing my lease, so I had three months to find somewhere halfway affordable if I didn’t want to end up on the street. That was just over two months ago, so time was ticking.

Then, the cherry on top of the crap sundae, the guy I’d been half-seeing told me he met someone else.

It nearly broke me, which hadn’t made sense to me at the time. I didn’t love the guy, and he didn’t love me, but his rejection stung. It was so patently clear that I’d been a placeholder for him while he looked for a woman he wanted to keep. And maybe I’d been a placeholder for my landlord, so he could make some money off his place while he lived his life elsewhere. And, hell, maybe I was a placeholder for my old boss, who let go of me without so much as a reference.

And now I was stuck in a room with a giant glass cock filled with pink perfume.

One of many dicks that had done me wrong lately.

Grimacing at the pink phallus, I admitted the truth: It was the loss of my job that had really hurt. I’d been working for a vintage clothing store as a manager and buyer. I’d go out and purchase all kinds of treasures, then care for them and put them for sale in our store. Looking back on it in the weeks of unemployment that followed, I realized that the owner had taken advantage of me for a long time.

I had started as a sales associate and quickly started taking on tasks outside of my job description. Much of the time I spent trawling through online consignment shops and thrift stores was unpaid. I told myself I enjoyed the activity—and didn’t I want the shop to be as good as it could be?

But the truth was, I should have been paid for that time. I should have demanded to be paid for that time. Instead, I drank in the empty promises of a promotion that included health insurance, dental, and a 401k match that would see me through my golden years, and the reimbursement of the school fees I’d incurred for upskilling.

What a bunch of bull.

I’d been a placeholder. A convenient person who went above and beyond because she thought she was appreciated, but really, she was a chump. Maybe that’s what I should’ve put on my resume to get people to hire me. Nikita Jordan: Will go above and beyond for free because she was, in fact, born yesterday.
A knock at the door drew my attention.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Locksmith,” an older man’s voice proclaimed. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you out.”

My shoulders dropped in relief. “Thank you.” I moved toward the table and crossed my arms to wait for the locksmith to do his thing.

But instead of the door opening and sweet relief flooding my veins, I stared at the dull gray metal of the door and listened to the old man’s frustrated grunts.
I moved closer. “Is everything okay?”

“Lock won’t budge. Have to take it apart.”

I jumped back when there was a bang on the door.

“Stupid thing,” the old man grumbled.

Then, another voice. This one younger and more commanding. “Why isn’t this door open? What’s the holdup?”

“Buddy, I’m trying here,” the locksmith protested.

“Try harder,” the other man said, danger laced through his words.

“Sir, he only just arrived,” I heard Ophelia simper from a little farther away.

And I understood. The second man was Rome Blakely, billionaire, entrepreneur, and dick-loving advertising mogul. My gaze narrowed on the steel door, then shifted to the pink penis.

I’m not sure what came over me then. It was some kind of deep, seismic shift in the very core of me. I’d been tossed aside by so many people so many times recently—and not so recently—and I was sick of it. Facing down the end of my employment, I discovered that this arrogant man being rude to a poor locksmith was pushing me closer and closer to the edge.

Blakely said, derision dripping from his voice, “How hard could it be to get a simple lock open?”

The locksmith said nothing, and the silence on the other side of the door turned oppressive.

My boss’s boss’s boss said, “Well?”

And I couldn’t take it anymore. Who was he, to treat this nice, grumpy, old locksmith like he was dirt under his shoe? I didn’t see Rome Blakely picking up the tools to get me out of here. And besides, I was about to get fired anyway! It was just another injustice in a long line of injustices delivered by men who were far wealthier and more privileged than me.

And I was sick of it. “Back off, Blakely,” I snapped. “He’s just trying to do his job.”

The silence thickened, but I was filled with too much righteous fury to let it bother me. I crossed my arms and glared at the door. “Well?” I said, echoing his rudeness.

“And who do we have hiding on the other side of this door?” he finally said, voice slithering through the gaps around the door toward me.

“Like you care,” I responded. “Just let this guy do his job and get out of the way.”

“I’m finding that I do care,” the billionaire on the other side of the steel barrier responded. “After all, you know my name. Shouldn’t I know yours?”

“Sir, it’s Nikki Jordan. A new hire. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be gone before the end of the day.”

I heard the man hum. “And how did Nikki Jordan get herself locked in the room with the single most important asset for this campaign?”

Somehow, I knew that despite the way he’d phrased the question, it was directed at me. So I responded accordingly. “Nikki Jordan did what she was told and buffed the giant perfume-filled dildo to a high shine”—the gasps on the other side of the door should have been a warning that I’d gone too far by mentioning the unmentionable, i.e., the fact that we were advertising male genitalia instead of fragrance, but outrage had buoyed me, and the man was just a faceless entity on the other side of a locked door. At that moment, he couldn’t hurt me. Nothing could hurt me. So I continued—“only to discover that Rome Blakely failed to maintain the operation of the locks in the building that bears his name, and she found herself locked in a small, windowless room for”—I checked the time on my phone—“two hours and seventeen minutes.”

The only sound I heard was the rushing heartbeat in my ears and my heavy breaths filling the small space.

But hey—I’d already lost my job. What did I care if I made an enemy along the way?

“Got it!” the locksmith exclaimed, and something metallic clattered on the other side of the door. “But—” He grunted, and there was a muffled thump on the other side of the door.

“What seems to be the problem?” Mr. Blakely asked in a slow drawl.

“It’s jammed somehow. Hey, lady, is the hinge on the door okay in there?”

I took a step to the side and inspected the hardware. “One of them seems wonky. When I first opened the door to get in here, it was a bit sticky.”

“I think the hinge failed,” the locksmith explained, “and it put pressure on the locking mechanism, snapping this piece here. You really should go for higher-quality locks, especially somewhere that’s getting this much traffic. I would never recommend a hook lock like this for this type of door.”

“Fascinating,” the jerk who owned the building replied. “Now get it open.”

“That might require a pry bar of some sort.”

“I’ll get maintenance up here,” Ophelia said, then called out, “Ben! Get maintenance up here.”

I pursed my lips and moved away from the door to lean against the table on the back wall again. In a strange way, I didn’t want the door to open. Once it opened, my job would be over. And I’d have to face the man I’d just sassed. The man who would fire me on sight. The man who would make me start all over again, because once again, they hadn’t hired me for me. They’d hired me to be a placeholder until they found someone better.

As my temper cooled, I began to dread the prospect.

The paycheck wasn’t much, but it was keeping the loan sharks at bay.

The sound of voices on the other side of the door faded and then increased again. I heard the sound of metal on metal, and the locksmith called out, “Stand back, lady!”
“I’m clear,” I replied, straightening.

There was a bit of grunting, the sound of a tool scraping against the door, then a horrible squeaking sound. After a moment, all was quiet except for the locksmith’s panting.
“Give me that thing,” Mr. Blakely ordered.

“Sir, we’ll get one of the grips—”

“Give me the pry bar,” he snapped.

My mouth went dry. I gripped the edge of the table with both hands, waiting for the noise of the tool being propped between the door and its frame. There was a scrape, then a beat of silence before the door was flung open with far more force than I expected.

I jumped, letting out a yelp, as the door swung open and flew toward the metal shelving.

And here’s where I might have messed up. The giant perfume bottle was on a wheeled dolly since it weighed a few hundred pounds. But as I’d vigorously buffed it, I’d found it hard to get some of the scuff marks out while the caster wheels let it move around. I’d tried hugging it with one arm while my free hand buffed, as unpleasant as that had been, but I kept leaving marks on it with my supportive arm. They didn’t have any locks on the dolly’s wheels, so I’d jammed it into the bottom of the metal shelves.

So the door flew open, and I caught a glimpse of Rome Blakely’s silhouette. He was in his shirtsleeves and tie, with a big metal bar grasped in strong hands. A dark lock of hair had fallen over his forehead, and his eyes were filled with a violent sort of victory.

Then the door hit the dick. The giant phallus, with its base jammed into the bottom of the shelving, was forced to bear the brunt of all of Rome Blakely’s considerable strength. The door slammed into the perfume bottle with enough force to make it rebound toward its frame.

Then a few things happened at once.

Mr. Blakely put his foot in the opening and stopped the door from closing again. I didn’t have time to be grateful, though, because the giant perfume bottle, being tall and slender, began to wobble.

Had the testicle-clouds been made of something solid, they might have been strong enough to hold the penis-bottle upright. Being made of fluffy cloud-like material, however, they failed to stop the bottle from wobbling.

In retrospect, I should have let the thing smash on the ground. Maybe the bottle wouldn’t have broken. Maybe all the drama that followed could have been avoided, if I’d just sat back and let things happen the way they would.

But I was a good girl. I was a little worker bee who always jumped in to help when I was needed. That’s how I’d ended up doing the job of four people for my old boss, and why every romantic interest seemed to slowly learn to take advantage of me. Why I always had been, and always would be, a stepping stone that people used while they were waiting for something better.

So, when the six-foot-tall cock began to tip toward me, I leaped forward to catch it. It, however, had the advantage of being taller and heavier than I was, and already on the way down.

I felt a sharp pain in my finger as it jabbed against the glass phallus. Then I tried to divert the thing’s descent but only managed to slam it against the shelving and nick the edge of it.

I heard a roared, “Get away from it!” and finally had the good sense to listen.

Cool glass kissed my leg as I stumbled and fell back, and then several hundred pounds of cock-shaped perfume fell to the concrete floor and shattered. A glass shard embedded itself below my knee while another slashed across my calf. Blood gushed.

A gasp slipped through my lips as I watched my clothes become soaked with the pink perfume flooding the room. A patch of dark-red blood diffused into the puddle of pink as I stared, not quite understanding. My hand throbbed.

The smell was horrendous. The bottle had actually been filled with perfume, and not some colored water. Why, I had no idea. I didn’t know why anyone thought that was a good idea. It was like a scented bomb went off, and suddenly I was dizzy and bleeding and the pain in my finger was unbearable.

It all must have happened within a couple of seconds. Distantly, I heard the clatter of the metal pry bar on the concrete floor, and then strong arms clad in a crisp white shirt were siding beneath my knees and around my back, and my boss’s boss’s boss was picking me up.

“I’m bleeding on your shirt,” I noted.

“Quiet,” he barked.

“It’s white. It looks expensive.”

“I don’t care about the shirt. You! Call an ambulance. You, Ophelia. Get a towel. Bring that table over, we need to set her down. And open a damn window.”

The edges of my vision were going fuzzy. The fingers of my uninjured hand felt clumsy as I reached up to feel the fabric of his shirt between my fingers. “Good-quality cotton. The fil-a-fil is a nice touch. Subtle blue tinge.” I glanced up, then my head lolled when I couldn’t keep it up. “Like your eyes.”

He had beautiful, startlingly blue eyes. His eyelashes were thick and very black, almost making it look like he wore eyeliner. Some people had all the luck.

Those remarkable eyes met mine. He was angry for some reason. “Will you stop talking?”

“Why?” I asked, surprised to find my voice was slurring.

I was jarred when he kicked something, and a chair went flying. Then, more gently than I would think him possible, he set me down on a hard surface. Glaring, he said, “I told you to be quiet. You’re bleeding.”

“Sorry about your shirt,” I said, pouting at the red stain on his arm. “But I already know you’re going to fire me, so it’s okay.”

“Just—don’t die, all right?”

“Firing me will be your loss,” I told him. I was a star employee, after all. They’d only had me for a week, and they’d put me on dick-polishing duty. “Big mistake for sure.”

The last thing I saw before everything went black were the dark slashes of his eyebrows drawing together, his full lips pursed in displeasure.

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